"It is a full virtualization solution but people are doing paravirtualization with it as well," Corbet said. "You'll see a lot with KVM in the future."

In addition to virtualization, there is another method called containers, like Linux-Vserver and OpenVZ, which "are a lighter approach."

Containers create a set of "walls" that run on the same kernel to isolate processes leading to better performance but the amount of work to get into kernel is non-trivial.

On the general kernel development process, Corbet said changes are happening faster than ever before and new features are being added to the kernel in months, not years.

"The process works a lot better now," he said. "Some say the new development model places too much emphasis on features and we are squandering our reputation for putting out high-quality kernels. It's hard to demonstrate whether the kernel is becoming more or less reliable."